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문학 온 스테이지 (On Stage) 프로그램 소개

상업화랑 기획 문학 온 스테이지 (On Stage) 프로그램은 글과 이미지, 큐레이터와 예술가, 작가(Artist)와 작가(Writer) 의 관계를 고찰해본다. 김인환 산문집 『타인의 자유』에서 출발하여, 회화와 설치작업을 하는 김지민 작가와 김성희 기획자는 글과 이미지에 대한 대담회와 낭독회를 진행했다. 최종 결과물인 대담회와 낭독회는 영상으로 공개될 예정이다. 또한 아트시(Artsy)의 문학 온 스테이지 연계 온라인 전시를 통해 김지민 작가의 신작을 만나볼 수 있다.

2. About The Freedom of Others

Poetry is to me what Nouvelle Vauge cinema is like. Everyone seems to be fanatical about it and to savour it, yet I am always hesitant at savouring it. What should I savour? I could taste the charming lines and scenes as if to covet delicious food but there was nothing left for me to chew and ruminate. Poetry was the same. I could not understand people who would have a poem by their side all their lives. Still, the pride of majoring in literature made me not give up on reading poems from Poe, Wordsworth, Baudelaire to Rimbaud from time to time, but it did not grow into pure and complete affection. I wanted a story and a lesson in the text but poems were just sentimental and sensorial. Compare to novels that lead you to arrive at a point if you just follow the letters freely, reading poems was a voyage to a place that can’t be reached, making you wander without a destination. While wandering like that, an opportunity that opens up a new horizon for poetry came to me.

Professor Kim In-hwan states ‘Writing poems is a sensory activity, not a thinking activity’ in his book 『Freedom of Others』「Hwang Hyun-san’s Prose: The Origin of Criticism」. If writing poems is a sensory activity, then reading it is also a sensory activity. What poetry wanted me to do was just to accept it as it is, but I was trying to find deep meanings and stories that refrained me from savouring and absorbing it. This corresponds to the concept of reading ‘in context’ from the first chapter of this book 「The Value of Reading」. Just like the sentence ‘There is a mental activity that works properly only when the line of dichotomous thinking is weakened.’, only by blurring the limits that I have established what novels should be like and poetry should be like, the mind can function properly within literature. By reading poems complying with ‘the side-viewing vision instead of the in-depth vision’, I would have been able to reach anywhere slowly across the current, even if not forward, rather than struggling in the sea of letters. The habit of pursuing in-depth reading may not disappear easily but I could reach somewhere someday if I treat poetry with my hardened manner and stubbornness abandoned, keeping the saying of C. S. Lewis, ‘Reading a new poem is to disarm and discard all logical and narrative connections used in reading prose or in conversation’ and of Kim, ‘The sole purpose of poetry is a new image’ in mind.

When teaching music, I emphasise to listen to the ‘sound’ in music. Focusing only on the repetitive rhythms and melodies that dominate the music will blur out the sounds that reverberate behind your ears, overhead and even in your mouth. If we see poetry as image just like hearing music as sound, we would be able to have the eyes that see “The image of something that certainly exists there but does not yet exist here”, and “Words of the future, words the spark the future, words of which the truth will be revealed in the future”. This interesting form of writing that criticises the criticism of a critic helped me take my first step towards approaching poetry. It is a book that faithfully justifies the introduction, “A book that lets you study by making yourself aware of your lack of study”. I am just a foolish person who, at the sight of a familiar name, brightens up like a dog wags its tail while browsing through the pages with a tilted head.

“The flesh is sad, alas! and all the books are read.” It is the first line of Mallarmé’s famous 「Sea Breeze」, which is often cited in many books including this one. I keep my head down for my insufficient and inadequate self, yet my flesh is not sad for countless books that link the past, present and future are spread out in front of me.

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1) 오독: 문학비평의 실험, 123쪽

글 고지인 (문학비평)

INSIGHT

문학 온 스테이지(On Stage)

작가(writer)와 작가(artist): 한국문학으로 시각예술 구연하기